OK, so I talked to Rach today and she said she knows a girl (maddie) who knows someone who is AMAZING at making corsets (sara), including for the purpose of tight-lacing.(The corset-making girl’s mom makes them professionally and taught her how.) It only costs $100 to cover the supplies!Of course, now the girl Sara is in college in Minneapolis-St Paul and may not have the time to make one, but I friended Maddie to discuss where she got it just in case. Apparently both of those girls have used it themselves but I believe the corset-making girl in question overdid it and her organs got in trouble.

Rach, of course, told me how concerned she is about this stuff, even though I honestly tried to reassure her. I said that if I ordered from Romantasy I would have a trainer & manual to make sure everything went alright, plus I’d take it slow and reduce only 6 inches off my waist when starting from 31. She got all iffy about it and Rach said that her own waist was 29″ and her mom’s waist (who is my height) is about 28″. I told her that her mom could probably still take off 3 inches and be healthy, but Rach remained skeptical. She said it wouldn’t look right on my body type. I insisted that of course I would lose weight as I went, and my body type would adjust and I’d see what looks natural. I brought up Dita Von Teese’s uncorseted 22-inch waist and corseted 16-inch waist, but Rach asked how tall she was. I lied and said “about my height?”, but I’ve looked it up and she’s 5’6″. (Still not too much of a stretch!) I reassured Rach that I didn’t want to get extreme but she said “that’s what they ALL say”.

Note: DAMN Rach’s mom! 5′ 9″, 28 inch waist, and does 16 miles a night on the stationary bike?!Now SHE is a thinspiration!

On the Subject of Mom

VERY cool mom news. She told me while driving back from Forensics that she’s going to enter a film contest that’s due in 39 days. She says she’s going out to film Grandpa’s motorcycle race in a few days and make it about how people let their desires go and even though motorcycling was his passion for so may years, he only just got back into this year. It’s about why he put it off, and why he’s going back. It’s supposed to be uplifting. I didn’t mention it to her, but I think mom is going back to something she loved, too! She talked about her ideas and how she didn’t want to bite off more than could chew, to take it slow and get it done. She said things about “serendipity” and used all these other words that basically mean the Universe lines up.

I have to admit, I’ve sort of seen this coming since maybe a month of so ago when she brough out that old film projector she used to have in college and played some film reels for everybody in the family. My biggest hope is that she FINISHES it and doesn’t lose steam, doesn’t lose faith in herself.Doesn’t let dad get her down; hoping that he doesn’t sense her newfound freedom and try and squash it. (Although in my reading, Cat DID mention that by October, she’d have solid female friends to heal her and help her live her life again. Maybe this is the first step? *knocks wood*) Maybe the Universe IS lining up for her…

On the Subject of Forensics

I went today and didn’t get a chance to read, but my desire is renewed. There’s a weird rush I feel about public speaking – probably because it’s as close to performing as I can get at the moment. I’m almost done typing out the story, which is by Kate Chopin, although I still have to figure out how to do a German accent for the mother and whether or not my lead character has a soft, feminine New Orleans drawl.

On thing that mom also told me driving back from Forensics is that I look so skinny andam probably the same weight I was back in middle school only taller now.That got me thinking. In middle school I was what, size 6 jeans and 140 to 150 pounds? I AM almost back there! I got down to 147 the other day (during a fast), so I technically AM there! This is NO TIME for slouching. I need to buckle down on my homework and get my workout ass in gear. Callanetics every night- I will clear the table in the way before I go to bed!

A sign from the Universe: my favorite gossip blogger, Lainey, has started talking about Harley Pasternack and his 5 Factor Fitness program, and following it daily on her site. I think this means I need to get around to doing his workout – if Lainey is featuring it, it MUST be legit! (Plus it popped up practically the day after I broke my water fast.)

On the Subject of Body Envy

OK, I get it. Weird topic. But I’m on adderall, I’m bored, and I really feel the need to continue writing. Having almost run out of things to write about (other than my homework – god forbid!!!), I shall write about Rach’s mom, whose figure I envy even though she is decades older than me and is probably in her early 50s.

She’s about my height (5′ 9″ – ish) and apparently does 16 mile a day on a stationary bike, which I estimate burns about 600 calories. Also, when i stayed over at their house for a few days, I saw that she occasionally did workout tapes downstairs. OK, fair enough. Her family eats healthy, which is great, although apparently Rach’s mom is so stressed all the time that it’s the source of her thinness. (Um, luck! When I get stressed, I cry or binge or both. Maybe I should implement a new rule that I can only eat when I’m happy or something…? or only eat when I’ve just done something productive!) Her waist is 28″, and that’s a whole inch less than her daughter’s. The daughter whom she gave birth to. Ugh.

She obviously has a fast metabolism on her side, but she doesn’t smoke or take diet pills, and even metabolism slows as you age. What I find so inspiring about her is that she has an upper-management job that she puts a lot of hours into but still manages to exercise so much and stay healthy AND thin. She’s assertive and funny and awesome; and her body is still in a shape that I envy, even though I’m young enough to be her daughter.

A survey of surviving Victorian stays shows that, while corseting was almost ubiquitous, few women could plausibly have even attempted to achieve what was popularly known as a “wasp-waist.” Organizing an exhibition several years ago for the Fashion Institute of Technology, Steele found that corseted waist-hip ratios tended toward .72which, far from freakish, approximates the natural build of everyone from Kate Moss to Marilyn Monroe, Twiggy to the Venus de Milo. With good reason: A 1993 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found consensus across ethnicity and gender for the desirability of approximately that ratio, numbers that typically indicate high fertility. So those secondary sexual characteristics admired by Havelock Ellis incite passion at a basic biological level, the level at which we objectify, at which we are objects of one another’s desire — the point at which basic procreation takes place.

My biggest problem is that I can’t pay for the corset! The one I need costs $300, and that’s IF I can get my waist down to 31″. If my waist stays where it is (35″-ish), it’ll cost an extra $20 for the cloth. (Callanetics, NO bingeing afterschool, etc. should do the trick, but I’ll have to work HARD!)

I called around, and Target & Burger King are not hiring. I called Kopp’s and they said they’re hiring probably for part-time weekend stuff (which would fit into my schedule REALLY well). At minimum wage rates, it’ll take me about 41 hours to earn it. (It’ll definitely be a motivator to lose those inches on the waist before I order it!) There’s a possibility that I could get about $100 from my parents before prom… maybe. If my waist starts at 31″, then the corset gets my waist down by 6 inches, I’ll be at a total of 25″. That’s the same as that skinny Caiti girl. That’s the same as Kiera Knightley!

“I don`t feel that we need to have children to validate our marriage and I don`t need children to claim I`m a fulfilled woman.” ~Dita Von Teese, being totally awesome.

“Some people say what I do isn`t very liberating. I say it`s pretty liberating to get $20,000 for 10 minutes work.” ~Dita Von Teese

“When sexuality, style, humor and playfulness all come together, along with a bit of innocence, well, that’s when a burlesque show becomes great.” ~Dita Von Teese

‘I just think that when you take a minute to look your best, you get what you want. And I pretty much get what I want.’

“I’ve had a lot of arguments with myself over this, but I think that if I were Nicole Kidman, and I were in a movie, and they were negotiating over my body parts—what my tits are worth, what my ass is worth, how much extra money that’s going to get me—how is that any different?” ~Dita Von Teese

“I`ve been called anti-feminist before and it makes me really mad. I don`t do my job for men, I do it because I love the make-up, the costumes and the history of showgirls.”~Dita Von Teese

NOTE: As a reward, check out the book “Bombshell Handbook” by the author of the Bohemian Manifesto.

October 24, 2009…4:52 pm

The Source of Hunger and Why It Disappears With Waist Training

Wikipedia says that “grellin is a hormone produced mainly by P/D1 cells lining the fundus of the human stomach and epsilon cells of the pancreas that stimulates hunger.[1] Ghrelin levels increase before meals and decrease after meals. It is considered the counterpart of the hormone leptin, produced by adipose tissue, which induces satiation when present at higher levels. In some bariatric procedures, the level of ghrelin is reduced in patients, thus causing satiation before it would normally occur.”

I heard Dr. Oz on his recent tv show mention that hormone and I went to look it up. Editors of a study on ghrelin quoted by Wikipedia, clarify that rapid emptying of the stomach is closely related to overeating and obesity and that gastric distension acts as a satiety signal. But corsets prohibit stomach distension. Does corseting substitute for gastric distension and also delay emptying of the stomach so that the wearer feels full faster?

The above brief introduction by Wikipedia doesn’t give me the answer to a few hunger-related questions I failed to address in my waist training book simply because I don’t have the answer yet. Those questions relate not only to what causes hunger and what’s related to it, but to why squeezing the stomach with a corset, aside from physically reducing the area one can stuff with food, reduces hunger not just in the moment–but permanently disappears hunger in a matter of days. That’s something I observe personally, and something that is consistently reported to me by other corset enthusiasts and by many of the students whom I coach in waist training. If ghrelin levels increase before meals yet a corseted person doesn’t feel hungry, what is happening?

As with any medical issue, there is a level of complexity that a layperson cannot possibly comprehend, and research changes the horizon study-to-study. It’s a topic I’ll pursue in the near future, but I’d like to hear about your practical hunger experiences of all kinds, especially with consistent corseting.